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Steven Rogers
Character Stat Sheet Public Information Captain America the hero of World War II, enemy of Hydra, the Star-Spangled Man with the Plan. Pretty much everyone's heard of his exploits in World War II and you'd have to be living under a rock not to know he came back a few years ago. Currently working for the Avengers, he is probably one of the best known and most-respected superheroes in the business. Steve Rogers Cap's identity isn't exactly a secret but Steve keeps a low profile when he's out of uniform preferring to live a quiet life in Brooklyn. Background If you knew Steve Rogers growing up you wouldn’t peg him to be one of the most famous men in both the 20th and the 21st Century. He was just a poor kid in Brooklyn who liked to draw, got picked last in gym class and drew bullies to him like nobody’s business. Well, maybe there was a hint of the sort of man Steve would become, because as many bigger kids picked on him he wouldn’t back down. Remembering something his late father told him before he died, ‘you never want to start a fight Steve, but you sure as hell never want to give up when you’re in one’. Steve took that to heart and it applied to more than bullies, his Dad died when he was young and his mother died when he was in his teens leaving Steve to bounce around to various uncles and aunts until he was old enough to live on his own. Too poor to go to college he got a job working down by the Brooklyn pier and spent his free time trying to break into drawing for comic books. That all changed when Japan attacked Pearl Harbour. Steve had been keeping up with the war in the paper and the news reels and could recognize a bully when he saw one, so when America joined the war he saw it as his chance to do his part. Except the skinny, sickly, Steve got rejected. Steve refused to give up and quickly became something of a legend in the recruiting stations, the guy who would never give up. Word of this mystery would-be soldier got back to General Phillips who was looking for recruits for Project Rebirth and after a bit of searching found Steve as he was being thrown out of a recruiting station. The General helped Steve up, dusted him off and gave him what he wanted a chance to serve. The time between that meeting and the experiment that made him a legend was a blur of tests and proceedures until finally the day came and Doctor Abraham Erskine injected Steve with the Super-Soldier Serum and infused his body with Vita-Rays. The change was instantaneous and scrawny Steve Rogers was transformed into a super soldier. Just in time too as a Nazi spy shot Doctor Erskine and fled leading Rogers to chase him down and defeat him. However the serum was lost and instead of Steve being the first of an army of super soldiers he became the only one. After the transformation he was taken off for training with some of the foremost experts in the United States army and elsewhere. While he was there, he befriended Bucky, a young man who had grown up in the army and had a reputation for being the guy who could get things. Despite the age difference Bucky helped Steve get through his training, having had a lot of it himself, and when Steve was done in a record three months, and donned the mantle of Captain America he chose Bucky to come along and watch his back. The two men soon became stars, capturing the imagination of the American public as they lead conventional forces and other superheroes to victory against the Nazis and most of all Hydra, the Nazi science wing. They were noticed too by the head of Hydra, the agent known as Red Skull. After many between the two men the truth came out that Red Skull had used a stolen prototype of the serum on himself making himself almost, but not quite the match for the Captain, which only drove his desire to destroy Rogers and Bucky once and for all. The duel with Red Skull only fuelled Steve’s legend at home and he soon became the subject of comic books and movies, while his reputation as a solid leader and genuine good-guy earned the respect of the men he fought with both those with powers and without, and he was soon the head of the Invaders, and rubbing shoulders with special operatives like Nick Fury and Dum-Dum Dugan as well as Agent Peggy Carter and Howard Stark. Others would cross his path as well such as James Howlett and Natalia Romanova. However Cap’s war was defined mostly by his battles with Hydra and the Red Skull, who finally scored a victory while battling the Invaders in Sibera. Cap bested the red-faced mad man, but in stopping Red Skull’s latest weapon Bucky lost his life. The loss of his friend and ally hurt Cap deeply, and even the burgeoning romance between Cap and Peggy Carter wasn’t enough to really bring him out of it and over the next several years Cap threw himself into taking down the Red Skull and Hydra. The dedication to his job brought the allies key victories but it would ultimately lead to his death. Defeating Red Skull’s forces once more Cap chased the Red Skull onto his experimental rocket plane and battled him in what would be their final battle. Red Skull was losing the fight until, desperate he shot the coolant system of the plane flooding the chamber with freezing gas and leaving Steve to watch helplessly while his old foe seemed to make good his escape. Unknown to Steve the plane, engines overheating, would explode taking Red Skull with it, but depositing Steve in the North Atlantic and still frozen due to the cold temperatures of the water. Despite extensive searches for Captain America he was never found his resting place mistaken for a natural glacier, and when he was declared dead Captain America was mourned his country in a show of national grief that outstripped that of the death of FDR a few months later. All the while Steve sat frozen, waiting. Then in 2013, Atlantean scientists working with the agreed upon climate innitiatives following the peace between Atlantis and the surface-world discovered Steve’s frozen body and brought it to Steve’s old Invaders ally King Namor. Unable to unfreeze Steve safely Namor turned to Nick Fury who with the help of Hank Pym, Reed Richards and Tony Stark safely unfreeze Steve and revive him. The notion of being frozen for sixty-eight years shook Steve to the core and it took time for him to come to terms with it, despite the help of his old friends Namor, Dum-Dum and Fury. Though ultimately Steve dealt with the problem by doing rather than sulking, throwing himself into his retraining on the Helicarrier. Though when the Merge happened that summer the time for training was over, and Steve donning a modernized version of his old costume and accompanied by SHIELD agents came to the defense of the Raft against Hydra’s attempt to break out Baron von Strucker. Following his participation in the fight the secret of his return was out Steve found himself a celebrity again, albeit an unwilling one. More than that both SHIELD and the US government wanted him for their teams. Though Steve would work with both SHIELD and Freedom Force making friends in both organizations both of them felt off to him even if he couldn’t put a finger on why. It wasn’t until he had a chance to fight beside some of the Avengers that he felt at home. It wasn’t the super-powers, it was the attitude. Sure they were a bunch of showboats at times but under all of that he couldn’t help but think that they had their hearts in the right place. Still, Steve was a soldier, and so it took a lot of soul searching before he was ready to break with his ‘unit’ and take Stark up on an invite to his New Years Eve party and get to know the team. The party was … interesting, but Steve and Tony had moment to talk honestly and Steve found the Avenger’s mission statement, Avenging those who can’t Avenge themselves, in line with what he was missing, a cause and a chance to stand up for the little guy rather than beating down Third-world ‘badguys’ for the sake of global security. It’s been a year since that party and Captain America is not just an Avenger but the one the most recent team has voted to be their field leader. It’s an honour he tries to live up to, but more than that his time with the Avengers (with the occasional moonlighting for SHIELD when Hydra’s involved) has given him a life, and when Cap isn’t flinging his mighty SHILED, he resides in a warehouse in Brooklyn, where he works as a graphic designer and tries to keep a low-profile. Personality Logs * 1943-10-12 - A Shattering Loss - Not all those who fight come home. Category:Marvel Features Category:Major Characters Category:Regular Characters Category:Avengers Category:Invaders Category:SHIELD Category:Available Characters